The BFS system architecture of FORE Systems is highly distributed in nature. In the BFS system, up to 156 memory controller ASICs act logically as one memory controller. Because the control bus to these ASICs is not logically synchronous across the distributed system, dynamic register synchronization was previously not possible. However, with the use of a signal generated on the logically synchronous data bus in conjunction with the use of shadow registers, dynamic register updating is made possible within the distributed setting.